 Research on Diabetics at IEMN: Engineered Nanoparticles and Technology as new means to manage Diabetes.
Diabetes is one of the leading causes of premature mortality worldwide. In metropolitan France, its prevalence in adults is 5% overall and reaches the highest level in the Hauts-de-France region with 7%. Diabetes is the primary cause of blindness and of end-stage renal disease, the major cause of amputation and of premature stroke and cardiovascular diseases.
Diabetes is defined as a chronically elevated blood glucose level. It results from the insufficient insulin production caused by the progressive beta-cell dysfunction and destruction overtime. At the present time, the beta-cell decline cannot neither be diagnosed by non-invasive imaging technologies, nor be stopped by medications.
Our strategy on this topic since 2014 at IEMN[i] is to respond to unmet medical needs by exploiting the quite unique multi-disciplinary environment of the laboratory, which ranges from biochemistry to microelectronic technologies, nanotechnologies and microfluidics. This strategy aims to improve the patient compliance to medicines by elaborating new non-invasive mode of antidiabetics delivery and to create new diagnostic tools for clinicians for real-time monitoring and visualizing the diseased beta cells in patients. It also planned to find out new natural antidiabetic peptide-based medicine for pancreas care and to engineer new devices for mimicking the true human pancreas environment in diabetes for clinical, pharmacological and research purpose.
A review written by the NBI team has been accepted lately in Chem. Soc. Rev. 2021, 50, 2102-2146
(https://doi.org/10.1039/C9CS00886A. The impact of chemical engineering and technological advances on managing diabetes: present and future concepts).
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